"Shaken, not stirred." Quick — name the dashing spy whose signature drink is a vodka martini garnished with a green olive with pimiento.

It's James Bond, of course, in all of his incarnations (though I confess that Sean Connery's Agent 007 makes my heart go pitter-patter).

You've got to admire the person who first thought to stuff a bit of red pimiento into a green olive -- tangy, tasty, color-coordinated... I haven't been able to find out who invented the stuffed olive, but it's likely that the idea originated in Spain, which produces both olives and peppers.

Freshly picked (green) olives are incredibly bitter. To render them palatable, they're soaked in an alkaline solution to remove bitter tannins, then in water to leach out impurities, and finally in a salt brine, where they ferment. When the pH drops to 3.7 and the lactic acid exceeds 5%, the olives are ready for bottling.

Balancing out the tartness of the olive, sweet red pepper (pimiento in Spanish) makes an ideal stuffing. After harvesting, the peppers are placed in brine, then ground and mixed with gelling agents to make a reconstituted paste. The paste is cut and formed into ribbons that look like strips of real pepper, and fed into pitting and stuffing machines. The machines pit the olives, cut the pimiento to fit, and stuff them — at the rate of more than 1,000 per hour.

Just for fun, because I had both green olives and a can of piquillo peppers in my pantry, I tried stuffing them by hand.

Turns out I can wriggle little pieces of pimiento into 30 olives in an hour ... but I can go to the grocery store, buy a giant jar of stuffed olives, and be back in my kitchen in under 30 minutes.

Comments

Catherine, welcome to The Perfect Pantry! Here's another pizza idea: spread this tapenade on pizza dough, and top with sliced tomatoes and mozzarella, maybe some fresh basil leaves, a drizzle of olive oil. Oh so good.....

Prepare grill.
Make relish:
In a food processor pulse olives until chopped fine. Add remaining relish ingredients and pulse until olives are minced.

Brush both sides of swordfish with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill fish on a rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals 4 minutes on each side, or until just cooked through. (Alternatively, fish may be grilled in a hot well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderate heat.)

Great recipe! However it makes more than a cup! I did not need 1 cup worth so I cut recipe in half and ended up with more than a cup of final product. I used 6oz dry weight black olives(1 can which is approximately 15oz with liquid), 5.75 oz dry weight green olives (assuming it was less than half a 16oz jar), full amount of capers (oops Mommy brain), half the garlic and half the olive oil. It almost filled a 2 cup container. Still super yummy but way more than we needed to use on 2 sandwiches. Going to see if the kids will try it but the garlic flavor may be a bit too much for them. Hubby swears the Elephant Garlic we grow is supposed to be colder than true garlic but it still packs quite a punch in my opinion. Especially when raw.

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Welcome to The Perfect Pantry®

My name is Lydia Walshin. From my tiny kitchen in Boston's South End, I share recipes that use what we keep in our pantries, the usual and not-so-usual ingredients that spice up our lives. Thanks so much for visiting.